University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln University of Nebraska Press -- Sample Books and Chapters University of Nebraska Press Fall 2013 Contemporary Comics Storytelling Karin Kukkonen Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/unpresssamples Kukkonen, Karin, "Contemporary Comics Storytelling" (2013). University of Nebraska Press -- Sample Books and Chapters. 215. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/unpresssamples/215 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Nebraska Press at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of Nebraska Press -- Sample Books and Chapters by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Contemporary Comics Storytelling Buy the Book series editors Frontiers of Jesse E. Matz Kenyon College Narrative David Herman Ohio State University Buy the Book Contemporary Comics Storytelling karin kukkonen University of Nebraska Press | Lincoln and London Buy the Book © 2013 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kukkonen, Karin, 1980– Contemporary comics storytelling / Karin Kukkonen. pages cm.—(Frontiers of narrative) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8032-4637-9 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Comic books, strips, etc.—History and criticism. 2. Graphic novels— History and criticism. 3. Narration (Rhetoric). I. Title. pn6710.k836 2013 741.5'9—dc23 2013012745 Set in Minion Pro by Laura Wellington. Buy the Book Contents List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1 How to Analyze Comics Cognitively 13 2 Textual Traditions in Comics: Fables, Genre, and Intertextuality 51 3 Fictionality in Comics: Tom Strong, Storyworlds, and the Imagination 87 4 Fictional Minds in Comics: 100 Bullets, Characterization, and Ethics 127 Conclusion 177 Notes 189 Bibliography 207 Index 227 Buy the Book Buy the Book Illustrations 1 Milton Caniff,Steve Canyon (19 January 1947) 12 2 Milton Caniff,Steve Canyon (9 March 1947) 26 3 Flycatcher, Fables 10: The Good Prince 46–47 4 Mark Buckingham’s Snow Queen, Fables 6: Homelands 53 5 H. G. Ford’s Snow Queen, The Pink Fairy Book 54 6 Tom Strong today, Tom Strong 5 90–91 7 Tom Strong in the 1940s, Tom Strong 1 112 8 Tom Strong and the Chevalier de Rêve, Tom Strong 6 120 9 Agent Graves’s Test, 100 Bullets 2: Split Second Chance 137 10 Dizzy’s Decision, 100 Bullets 1: First Shot, Last Call 152 11 Graves and Dizzy, 100 Bullets 13: Wilt 173 Buy the Book Buy the Book Acknowledgments This book emerges from my thesis work, which was published with Tampere University Press. Since then, my thinking on contemporary comics has come a long way. I would like to thank everyone who accom- panied it with their kind and thoughtful comments: Terence Cave, David Fishelov, Ann Miller, Sabine Müller, Henrik Sklov Nielsen, Alan Palmer, Hans-Ulrich Seeber, Howard Sklar, Emily Troscianko, as well as the anonymous readers for the University of Nebraska Press. Terence Cave and the Balzan Interdisciplinary Seminar have given this book a won- derful environment to grow in. David Herman is a superhero among se- ries editors, and I thank him and the team at the University of Nebraska Press—Kristen E. Rowley, Sabrina Stellrecht, and Jonathan Lawrence— for seeing my book through the publication process. My thanks to Harry Guyton and dc Comics for granting permission to reprint the images. ix Buy the Book Buy the Book Contemporary Comics Storytelling Buy the Book Buy the Book Introduction Many reasons for the rise of comics to a medium of cultural prominence have been put forward in recent years. Paul Douglas Lopes in Demanding Respect: The Evolution of the American Comic Book (2009) emphasizes one: “While comic books originally were based on short stories in seri- al format, now comic books present long-arced narratives with complex storylines. Now the fastest growing market for comic books, graphic nov- els, presents this art in book-length format, again allowing for complex and compelling storytelling” (2009, xvi). Lopes then goes on to discuss how sophisticated storytelling in comics moves beyond genre boundar- ies and attracts the widespread attention of “cultural gatekeepers,” like journalists and professional reviewers, prize committees and librarians. Lopes embarks on a social history of comics in his book. What I am in- terested in, however, is precisely the “complex and compelling storytell- ing” that Lopes does not explore much further. How do comics tell their stories? How do they achieve complexity, playing with genre frames, im- mersing readers in fictional worlds, and helping them to construct the fictional minds of characters? Contemporary Comics Storytelling sug- gests a cognitive approach for analyzing comics in all their richness and complexity. As my case studies will show, contemporary comics use their complexity to engage with the legacy of postmodernism,1 its subversion, self-reflexivity, and moral contingency, by positing their own alternatives. This book is an investigation into how the storytelling of comics stands at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It has a narratolog- ical and a literary agenda. Dubbing comics “narratives” is hardly con- tested; dubbing comics “literature” certainly is (see Meskin 2009 for an overview of this discussion). Let me explain what I mean by that. Literature can be defined through different features: formal complexity, multiple meaning potentials, an imaginative reconsideration of the fa- miliar, an intervention in a cultural debate, the institutionalization of a 1 Buy the Book canon, the social practice of creating texts as “literature,” and accumu- lating cultural capital by reading them, to name but a few.2 On this ac- count, literature is not tied to the written text (in fact, films can be seen as literature, too)3 or to the vexed distinction between high culture and low culture, which can (a priori) assign entire media, like comics, to the ghetto of prestigelessness and irrelevance. Texts and their features, the way they engage readers, and how they participate in cultural conversa- tions all come together here. Seeing comics as literature means consid- ering how these aspects interact. A cognitive perspective on comics outlines the formal complexities and multiple meaning potentials involved when comics engage their readers and help them to revisit the familiar imaginatively. This does not necessarily take the shape of formalist defamiliarization; it can also be engendered in immersive renditions of storyworlds and thought ex- periments played out, such as what if fairy-tale characters lived in con- temporary New York? What if there was a superhero aware of his fiction- ality? What if you could dispense your own justice aided by one hundred untraceable bullets? Comics like Fables, Tom Strong, and 100 Bullets are literary because they make their readers think, even as they enjoy the read, and because they contribute through their imaginative revisiting of the familiar to the ongoing cultural conversation. Institutionalization and cultural capital in comics might be following hard on the heels of these features, as the New York Times’ assessment that comics might be the “new literary form” (McGrath 2004) suggests. After waiting on the sidelines for decades, comics have also become more visible in academia in recent years. Comics are no longer confined to afterthoughts and asides (as in the writings of Roland Barthes 1984b, Seymour Chatman 1978, and Edward Branigan 1992) or to the occasion- al foray into the unknown (as, for example, in Umberto Eco 1972 and 1976); now they have journals, book series, and mla discussion groups devoted to them.4 Special issues of established journals attest the interest of a larger academic audience,5 and publications like the Comics Studies Reader edited by Heer and Worcester (2009) point toward the emergence of a canon of comics criticism. However, as Heer and Worcester docu- ment with their collection, comics studies are highly divergent in their approaches. The essays, articles, and excerpts in theirComics Studies Reader range from the history of the medium to formal categorization 2 Introduction Buy the Book and analysis, and from cultural studies accounts to the appreciation of individual works. This book considers the formal features of the comics text, provides close readings of individual works, and inscribes them into a larger ar- gument about the renegotiation of postmodernism in contemporary cul- ture. My account therefore connects to a wide cross-section of the ap- proaches in comics studies. What I am mostly interested in, however, is not so much issues of form, close reading, or cultural context but the meaning-making processes that run through all of them. When we read comics, we pick up clues from the text and fill in the gaps it leaves; we construct stories, immerse ourselves in storyworlds, and project the fictional minds of characters. How does this meaning-making process work for comics? How do comics create clues, what kinds of gaps do they leave, and how does this contribute to storytelling? In the following pag- es I will venture to answer these questions and show how these processes are at work when comics balance subversion and tradition, self-reflexiv- ity and mimesis, contingency and commitment in their encounter with postmodernism. Storytelling and Postmodernism Postmodernism is the dominant intellectual trend of the second half of the twentieth century. Its mode of thinking and perception of the world pervades philosophy, art and literature—in fact, all areas of cultural pro- duction. Since postmodernism is such a wide-ranging phenomenon, it is rather difficult to define it precisely. Linda Hutcheon, a leading theo- rist of postmodernism, repeatedly points out the many self-contradic- tory features of postmodernism and the problems for definitions this brings (see Hutcheon 1988).